Quotes from Trevor Noah

I lived my life as a - as a part-white, part-black but then sometimes-Jewish kid.

I was born in South Africa during apartheid, a system of laws that made it illegal for people to mix in South Africa. And this was obviously awkward because I grew up in a mixed family. My mother's a black woman, South African Xhosa woman... and my father's Swiss, from Switzerland.

The older you get, the more you start to realize that you can't win an argument in a relationship. You can't win a fight with your woman. Because if you lose, you lose. And if you win, you lose.

If you laugh with somebody, then you know you share something.

I don't think I have thick skin, but I heal fast. It's easy to break through, but I heal fast.

I've always been a fan of issues around race and racialism, and I've loved playing with it. People act as though it isn't an issue, but it's a recurring theme in our lives globally.

Donald Trump does not take criticism well, nor does he appreciate reporting on his life.

The first purpose of comedy is to make people laugh. Anything deeper is a bonus. Some comedians want to make people laugh and make them think about socially relevant issues, but comedy, by the very nature of the word, is to make people laugh. If people aren't laughing, it's not comedy. It's as simple as that.

We all do that as human beings, you know? It's what my mom would call shopping on an empty stomach. You're going to buy food that you shouldn't because, at the time, you are reacting to your hunger.

America was a thing I saw on TV - that wasn't a real world. That wasn't within my realm of dreaming.

Twitter is a place where there is extreme vitriol at all times.

We get angry about the small things sometimes, I feel, so that we feel like we're doing something, so that we don't have to tackle the big things. And it's fine; let people do that. But I'm not gonna now change because of that. You know? Like, the worst thing that happens to me is you don't like me. And then what?

I love ebola jokes. When done in the right way, maybe it gets people to learn about ebola, to learn about the stigmas behind the identities held by Africans and so on.

I'm a quarterback. I don't need to score the touchdown. I just need to spot the pass.

There are many people out there who don't even think of themselves as being averse to facts, but the truth is, they are not getting it.

I'm literally driving in the middle of the night, and my phone rings, and my manager says, 'How would you like to be the host of the Daily Show?' I get out the car, and I didn't have legs. You know in those movies where there's an explosion? But instead of the sound of the explosion, you hear the silence. That's literally what happened.

We live in the Internet age. Everyone wants clicks. Clicks are what sells.

I lost contact with my father for many years because of apartheid. For, like, six years, I didn't see my dad. And, now, this was the six years of being a teenager.

I live in South Africa. I'm proud to live there. I've always said I want to be a comedian from South Africa in the world. I will stay in places for a bit here and there and pop into New York for a while, maybe stay in London for a year, but my home will always be South Africa. I enjoy it too much.

During my New York run, I injured my voice badly. I was getting increasingly hoarse, and it finally gave up. The doctor said I had two choices. Either cancel things, or try my luck and perhaps never speak again. That's not much of a choice.

I was the first in my family to board an airplane. I was the first in my family to get kicked off an airplane.

The truth is, people don't know me. When people don't know you, they're going to try to get to know you as quickly as possible, because you're now taking the place of somebody that they love dearly, or somebody that they hate sincerely, and so they need to know who you are.

When you see someone as a human being, you begin to understand most people are doing what they believe is right. I ask myself, "What if you were wrong? How would you want someone to engage with you?"

We've got so many different cultural groups in my family that I've had to learn to accommodate them in different ways. My father speaks different to my mum. My mum speaks different to my grandmother. Everybody speaks different, so you find you start tweaking your language to be more accessible to people.